I have the pleasure of seeing hundreds of different types of business's each year and as an adviser I love nothing more than to see them prosper and exceed in their own expectations. It is a very large part of my role as an advisor and something I am very passionate about to this day.
On the flip side of helping and talking with business owners I also get the privilege of utilising the services of a lot of businesses both locally and nationally and it is to this end that I remain constantly astounded at the way in which people conduct their business's.
Let Me Explain!
A common complaint is that "business is bad" "nobody's buying" "the phones have stopped ringing" and so on... but is business really bad or are we just doing bad business? Let me give you two very real and distinctly different stories -
We recently had the interesting experience of using a local business to undertake some reasonably large work that needed careful planning and attention. After providing them with a detailed scope of the project, a quotation was provided of which we accepted and it was 'happy days'...or so we thought.
In going through the process of this project I was continually amazed at the amount of times that things were promised, but not delivered. People who said they were going to show up on a date and time did not show up. In one instance, the business owner promised to come three days within the one week and on each occassion, never did. Not a phone call, a message, even an apology for not delivering on what they said they would. It then took weeks to have them eventually come and do the simple job.
Yet, they tell me "business is bad". "No body's buying". "The phone has stopped ringing".
If I contrast this with a recent experience I had with a well known company Dell Computers.
One of our very important file-servers crashed and died on Easter Monday, of all days. I rang DELL technical support on Easter Monday evening at 6.30pm to report the issue, as I had a full team of employees coming to work the next day.
A friendly technician called me at 7.30 pm that same evening and asked me if I would like him to travel immediately from Brisbane to the Gold Coast this evening to fix the problem? I couldn't make the poor man travel for an hour on the last night of a long weekend, so he promised he would have the parts on our doorstep first thing in the morning, along with a technician to fix the problem.
To their word the parts arrived on time, the technician arrived as promised, our server was fixed as promised and all rubbish and faulty parts where removed. By the time they had finished, you wouldn't have known they'd been there at all.
This is not a one off instance. On another occasion we ordered critical parts at 4pm in the afternoon. They promised they would be delivered that evening at 7pm as they where coming once again from Brisbane. At 6.45 they phoned me to say they had been held up in traffic and would be 15 minutes late. To their word they arrived at 7.15pm, problem solved.
Is it because Dell is such a multi-million dollar company that this kind of service is acheived? Definitely not! Michael Dell started this business from the boot of his car in a university car park.
My point is they are doing business well and that is why their phones are still ringing, They are still growing and people are still buying.
Do they make mistakes? I'm sure they do. We are all human but what is their normal service and business standard? What experience do they strive to provide their customer no matter how big or small?
What is your business standard?
What are your service values?
I suspect in a lot of circumstances business isn't THAT bad?
